1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to a method for transcoding video streams, and more particularly to a method for transcoding video streams with reduced number of predictions.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Since the first version of H.264/AVC was published in 2003, the video coding industry has continued to evolve. The range of platforms and delivery mechanisms for video continues to grow, with an increasing expectation that video content should be available on any platform from mobile to HD and 3D displays, over any network including broadcast, internet, mobile, etc.
A single source video may be required to be transmitted to multiple clients or decoders, each with different capabilities. For example, a source video is coded three times to produce three independent AVC streams, each of which is transmitted and decoded to reconstruct the contents of the source video. A challenge for many video compression applications is to deliver multiple versions of a video sequence at different operational points, e.g. different qualities, spatial resolutions or frame rates. Since each version of the source video is coded independently, separately coding and transmitting each version is very time-consuming.